The Cause of Inconstancy

How have I heard the fair lament Mans falsehood, and their wretched fate? How few are with their spouse content, Or constant to their sighing mate?

How seldom souls below are join'd, For one another form'd above? How seldom pairs of hearts we find, By heaven ordain'd for mutual love?

Thus man's inconstant soul we blame, For want of knowledge, or of thought, When all the while, 'tis in the frame Of both their bodies lies the fault.

When Jove had made this little ball, For four-legg'd beasts, and creeping things, At length he form'd, to govern all, A two-legg'd creature without wings.

Millions of these he made at once, To save himself all further trouble, And men and women, for the nonce, By pairs, like tallies, he made double.

Then from Olympus dreadful top, Well shaken in a bag together, He toss'd them down, and let them drop Just as it pleas'd the wind or weather.

Some fell in Asia, some in Greece, In England some, and some in Spain, But seldom two of the same piece, In the same climate met again.

Hence men, who grown to riper years, Remembring this their former making, Hunt up and down to find their peers, And women too in the same taking.

Some prove too short, and some too tall, This is too big, and that too little, A fault they're sure to find in all, Few ever tally to a tittle.

By chance a pair may meet and love, And spend their lives in bliss together, But when they tumbled from above, It must be mighty temperate weather.

From hence the murmuring fair may see, Mens hearts are not to blame a bit, Our souls would never disagree, If once our bodies did but fit.